OKCupid says it will accept Bitcoin, as currency falls to recent low

Cofounder: "I'm not crazy enough to hold Bitcoin as an investment strategy.”

On Tuesday, as Bitcoin’s exchange rate fell to its lowest level in days at around $64 per bitcoin, OKCupid announced that it would accept the digital currency from users wanting to pay for bonus features on the site. The popular (and free) dating site, which boasts 4 million active users, will now become one of the world’s largest sites to accept Bitcoin.

OKCupid users can pay an average of $12 per month (the amount varies depending on how much is prepaid at a time) to access "A-List" extra options like being able to browse other profiles anonymously. The real price will continue to be denominated officially in dollars and will be adjusted for Bitcoin users in real time to reflect present exchange rates as determined by Coinbase.

Sam Yagan, one of the company’s founders, told Ars that for the time being OKCupid has only received around a “dozen requests from users to pay in Bitcoin.” However, it's telling that the company will not be carrying any of its own corporate balance in bitcoins; it will instead use Coinbase to clear all Bitcoin transactions.

“Our plan is to liquidate our holdings daily and turn them into US dollars,” Yagan said. “There's an open question as to how much liquidity there is. I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of volatility. One of the reasons why we want to be early in the mix is so we can learn.”

Crazy coins

Yagan himself said that he personally does hold bitcoins, but he characterized them as a "relatively modest amount."

“I’m not doing it as an investment,” he said. “I have enough in there to settle wagers and buy stuff. I'm not crazy enough to hold Bitcoin as an investment strategy.”

"Online retailers and service providers are figuring out the true disruptive nature of Bitcoin, which is not about its commodity-like qualities or its exchange rate, but rather that it's a new payment system in competition with Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal," wrote Jerry Brito, director of the Technology Policy Program at George Mason University, in an e-mail to Ars.

Promoted Comments

I hope they automatically disclose the member's "bitcoin status" in their profile. It'll make for another handy red flag, like citing Ayn Rand as a favorite author or or mentioning that one is a brony, or only having bathroom mirror photos.

I hope they automatically disclose the member's "bitcoin status" in their profile. It'll make for another handy red flag, like citing Ayn Rand as a favorite author or or mentioning that one is a brony, or only having bathroom mirror photos.

No idea if OKCupid is publicly traded, but I wonder how a corporation would quantify a revenue stream like this in their corporate guidance? They're trying to minimize their exposure to volatility by liquidating all their Bitcoins every day, but they are still vulnerable to the wild hourly swings in value that characterize Bitcoin lately.

I hope they automatically disclose the member's "bitcoin status" in their profile. It'll make for another handy red flag, like citing Ayn Rand as a favorite author or or mentioning that one is a brony, or only having bathroom mirror photos.

Being able to spell Ayn Rand is a red flag (I just copied from your post), but bronies are exactly the kind of sensitive guy that women have always said (lied) that they want.

No idea if OKCupid is publicly traded, but I wonder how a corporation would quantify a revenue stream like this in their corporate guidance? They're trying to minimize their exposure to volatility by liquidating all their Bitcoins every day, but they are still vulnerable to the wild hourly swings in value that characterize Bitcoin lately.

OK Cupid is a subsidiary of InterActiveCorp, a public traded holding company. Yagan and co sold OKCupid to Match.com (owned by IAC) in 2011.

No idea if OKCupid is publicly traded, but I wonder how a corporation would quantify a revenue stream like this in their corporate guidance? They're trying to minimize their exposure to volatility by liquidating all their Bitcoins every day, but they are still vulnerable to the wild hourly swings in value that characterize Bitcoin lately.

Some large banks are already on the record as "no comment" when asked if they hold any bitcoin. I wouldn't be surpised if they are already playing the speculation game in bitcoins. No annoying federal agents asking what you are doing with other people's money.

"Online retailers and service providers are figuring out the true disruptive nature of Bitcoin, which is not about its commodity-like qualities or its exchange rate, but rather that it's a new payment system in competition with Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal,..."

And so it will be amusing to see the "character assassination" tactics the incumbents use against bitcoin.

As long as the established players can keep playing-up the "Silk Road" and "Illegal Drugs" aspects - and the ever-popular: "Why do you want/need to use a pseudonym... what are you hiding/ashamed of?" - it will be an uphill battle for bitcoin to become mainsteam, even if price-swings become less dramatic.

Some large banks are already on the record as "no comment" when asked if they hold any bitcoin. I wouldn't be surpised if they are already playing the speculation game in bitcoins. No annoying federal agents asking what you are doing with other people's money.

It's unlikely large banks are doing too much bitcoin speculation. The market isn't large enough. The total value of all bitcoins is back to a few hundred million dollars, and the daily turnover is much smaller than that.

If you look at e.g. forex trading, banks routinely trade trillions of USD worth to eke out relatively small profits. (In fact, the amount of currency exchange that happens for speculation dwarfs the amount that happens for actual international trade by a spectacular amount. It's pretty sickening.)

Although the smaller size of the bitcoin ecosystem makes it much easier to push around for the sake of making money, the amount of money that can be made that way isn't of interest to an entity of that size; it wouldn't even pay one trader's annual bonus.

Individuals, on the other hand, can and do engage in exactly that sort of thing.

This doesn't make much sense.OKCupid doesn't even accept PayPal, and now they are going to accept a currency/payment system used by less that 1% of their customers?!

Bitcoin has lower fees than credit cards, by several percent of the sale. It's not hard to set up for accepting them if you already have the skills to run a major website with e-commerce. So basically they have little to lose and something to gain. So why not?

No idea if OKCupid is publicly traded, but I wonder how a corporation would quantify a revenue stream like this in their corporate guidance? They're trying to minimize their exposure to volatility by liquidating all their Bitcoins every day, but they are still vulnerable to the wild hourly swings in value that characterize Bitcoin lately.

What OKCupid is selling is relatively ephemeral, margins are big enough to absorb fluctuations, and the theoretical maximum they are risking is a day's revenue. Truth is a the risk is going to be a LOT lower than that because it is a day's worth of BTC denominated transactions.

If they were selling hard goods that they were in turn purchasing from suppliers, and BTC was going to constitute some meaningful portion of their sales, it would be a lot riskier.